My friend Tory (I think I've mentioned him on several occasions) is moving to Chicago tomorrow, so today was his going away party. He invited several co-workers over, but convienently all of them were scheduled or had prior arrangements, so it was just him and I. (Later, another friend, herein Nate, came over).
We get over there and eventually we build a fire, because you can't have a party without a fire, and fire's are cool. So, we burn up most of the firewood laying around, and theres a dead tree with weak roots in the backyard. See where this is going?
Anyhow, we walk out to the back yard, check out the scene, and the two of us push it over. Eh, sounds easier than it was. It took about a half hour, one really thick log (acted as a lever with it's fulcrum at a nearby tree, weakening the roots more), and a whole hell of a lot of shoving. Anyhow, we take an axe to it and chop some chunks out of it. The rest is still there. The wood that we chunked out of it went on to the fire we had, which was already pretty big, and was bigger when we added the really dry wood to it, although it burned up quick.
The rest was uneventful until Nate came into play at about 6. Basically hitting things with axes and picking up twigs around the yard, with the occasional sit-around-and-do-nothing moments. When he comes over, Tory's little brother Taylor thinks it's a good idea to get on his ATV and blow dirt in our faces while we're axing the tree to bits. So, of course, my vindictive imagination comes in to play.
"Hey Tory.. see that dead tree right there? If we knock it over, it'll land on his track. *evil smirk*". So we did just that, with considerably more effort. The first tree we didn't even use an axe on, but this one we had to cut about halfway through before it would snap. Taylor finally realized what we did about 10 minutes before it finally fell and complained to his dad, who sided with us (he hated that dead tree anyhow, apparently). So, after Nate was the warning man (LOOK OUT! A PIECE IS ABOUT TO FALL!) and all the falling things had fallen to the ground, the three of us pushed it right over, and convinently the top (which was sort of a notch, since a big piece had fallen from the middle and the sides were still intact) fell right into another tree. Remember the ATV? Makes a good battering ram. We pushed the base of the tree right off the stump and the other end fell to the ground. We took an axe to it's reminant, tossed it on a trailer and hauled it back, and burned it.
Later on, I had another great idea. "Hm.. I wonder if this fire is hot enough to make glass." So, I tossed some sand on it, and after about 30 minutes I looked again and we had some nice bubbly (yet, not very clear
) glass. Also, we stuck a piece of rebar in with enough hanging out to grab it with gloves on and not cause burns, and when we pulled it out it was orange-hot and bent. I got another piece of metal, melted it, and tried forging it into a sword, but unfortunately I couldn't hit it hard enough to bend it (I was using a metal plate on the ground.. not much for a forge).
Then we picked all our stuff up, hosed about 15 gallons of water onto the fire, shined flashlights into the steam, and then admired how the coals were STILL dry. So then Tory drove me home and Nate left. Went home, showed, got all the dirt off me, listened to some Metallica, played guitar, and posted this. Yup, good night.
